The wage gap between blacks and whites is the largest since 1979

The wage gap between blacks and whites is larger today than it
was in 1979, according to a new report released
by the Economic Policy Institute on Tuesday.

The report found that black men make 22 percent less money
than do white males, while black women make 34.2 percent
less.

Factors such as experience, location, and education were
controlled for in the report, which also found that the
racial wage gap is growing primarily because of discrimination,
or "racial differences in skills or worker characteristics
that are unobserved or unmeasured in the data." Growing income
inequality is also a contributing factor.

Of all the groups evaluated by the EPI, it found
that black women with less than 10 years of experience
have been affected most by the racial wage gap. It also
found that black male college graduates who entered the
workforce in 1980 had less than a 10 percent disadvantage
compared to white college graduates; today, black male graduates
are at approximately an 18 percent disadvantage.

The report found that wage growth has lagged significantly behind
productivity growth for everyone except those in the top 5
percent since 1979. For workers in the top 1 percent, wage growth
has exceeded productivity growth. And while lagging wage growth
has affected workers across all demographics, growth has been
even slower for African Americans, compared to white men and
women.

"As a result, pay disparities by race and ethnicity have
remained unchanged or have expanded," according to the
report.

While the report also found that the racial wage gap is smaller
between women than between men, it notes that this does not
necessarily imply that black women do not face as many obstacles
as black men, but that the disadvantage they experience may be
more associated with the gender pay gap.

Although the racial wage gap has trended upwards since 1979, it
has not an uninterrupted increase. The wage gap expanded
significantly in the 1980s, then decreased significantly in the
1990s before increasing slightly after 2001, according to the
report.

The exception to this, the report notes, are
"new-entrant women, for whom racial wage gaps have grown
more between 2007 and 2015 than in any other period included in
our analysis."

The EPI, a left-leaning think tank, made a number of
recommendations on how best to decrease the wage gap, all of
which will involve "intentional and direct action." These changes
include:

Enforcing anti-discrimination laws that are already on the
books

Having the Bureau of Labor Statistics evaluate and identify
the so-called "un-observable measures" that seem to play a role
in racial wage gaps